Seven Husbands?

Scripture: Luke 20:27-38 11/9/2025

Luke 20:27–38 NIV

27 Some of the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus with a question. 28 “Teacher,” they said, “Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. 29 Now there were seven brothers. The first one married a woman and died childless. 30 The second 31 and then the third married her, and in the same way the seven died, leaving no children. 32 Finally, the woman died too. 33 Now then, at the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?” 34 Jesus replied, “The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. 35 But those who are considered worthy of taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, 36 and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection. 37 But in the account of the burning bush, even Moses showed that the dead rise, for he calls the Lord ‘the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ 38 He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”

Order of Service:

Announcements

Opening Worship

Prayer Requests

Prayer Song

Pastoral Prayer

Kid’s Time

Offering (Doxology and Offering Prayer)

Scripture Reading

Sermon

Closing Song

Benediction

Special Notes:

Standard

Opening Prayer:

God of faithful surprises,

throughout the ages

you have made known your love and power

in unexpected ways and places.

May we daily perceive

the joy and wonder of your abiding presence

and offer our lives in gratitude

for our redemption. Amen.

Seven Husbands?

Setting the Stage

Last week, we stood in the streets of Jericho watching Jesus call Zacchaeus down from the sycamore tree, declaring salvation had come to his house. Now Jesus has arrived in Jerusalem, where the religious leaders have been waiting—not with joy like Zacchaeus, but with carefully crafted traps. Today, it's the Sadducees' turn, the powerful priestly class who controlled the temple. They approach Jesus with a riddle about a woman who married seven brothers, each of whom died in turn.

It's a question designed to make the resurrection look foolish. But Jesus doesn't back away from their question. Even though it's set up as a kind of trick question they've used to trap others over the many years that they have held power in Jerusalem. In a way, they're using the issue of marriage to cover up the issue they have with the resurrection and judgment. But Jesus answers that question about marriage directly, which probably surprised all of them. He explains that in the life after resurrection, the life in heaven for eternity, nobody is married. People are not given away in marriage. They do not take husbands and wives for themselves or arrange those relationships for their children or grandchildren. He tells them, "We're transformed." And in doing so, Jesus very directly, and yet gently, addresses a deeper question that the Sadducees weren't even willing to ask.

In the male-focused society and culture they lived in, having seven husbands for one wife posed a problem. In their culture, there were issues of property and inheritance that were very different in a situation with multiple husbands than in one with a man who had seven wives. There was a reason they told the story and asked the question the way that they did. But the true question underneath all of that should have been, when all seven men and the one woman finally die and are raised from the dead at the end, who does she belong to? Perhaps that question isn't as polite as the way they asked it, but it's more honest about the answer they're truly looking for. And that's the question that Jesus answers directly.

Who does this woman belong to?

The Sadducees

The Sadducees were Jewish leaders who did not believe in the resurrection. That's an oddly specific political and religious platform to stand on. And while the lack of belief in the resurrection has been a recurring theme throughout the history of the church, especially in times when the church struggled to remain faithful, that particular belief does not just pop up out of nowhere. There are reasons behind it. Many Pharisees came to Jesus to test him throughout his ministry, asking him questions like what the greatest commandment was and quizzing him on his interpretation of the law. In the passage before today's scripture, the zealots and revolutionaries questioned him about whether it was right to pay taxes to Rome. The Sadducees are only noted for asking Jesus one question. Because they held power in Jerusalem, because Rome supported them as they were left in charge of the temple, they were probably the least threatened by Jesus out of all the Jewish groups.

So the question that they bring to him may not have been one that they made up on the spot or carefully crafted just for Jesus. It may have been one of those philosophical traps that left people stuck between a rock and a hard place, as they asked all the Pharisees and anyone else who tried to convince them to believe in the resurrection. They may have pulled it out as their trump card in every debate, as they walked away with a smug look on their face, knowing they had asked a question that they believed could only be answered one way without messing with the sanctity of marriage.

But marriage was not really their issue. And in many ways, neither was the resurrection.

The underlying issue for them —the reason they denied the resurrection of the dead —was their problem with judgment. You see, in all the ancient Near Eastern religions, there was a concept that, after death, everyone stood before the ultimate authority and was judged, rewarded, or punished accordingly. You probably can't find a chapter in the entire Bible that doesn't at least hint that God is going to be the judge of all creation. In many cases, it says it outright. The Pharisees believed that. Most of the Jewish people before them all believed that. But that idea was offensive to the Romans. The Romans worshiped the old Greek gods, who'd been given new names, but the most important god they worshiped was the emperor. They gave the emperor the title, "Son of God," which is why Rome had problems when Christians started calling Jesus "Son of God." To them, the emperor was the Son of God because his father, upon his death, was promoted to godhood and, in their minds, literally became a god. Therefore, that former emperor's son who would take over in his place would become the Son of God. If they were going to be judged by anybody, it'd be the emperor. Certainly not some invisible spirit from a backwater hill country in the Middle East, in the middle of nowhere, who hadn't even spoken to his people in 500 years.

Those prayers of the Jews that God would bring justice on the heads of their enemies offended all the people of Rome, who were there to enlighten them and bring them out of the Dark Ages and into modern times, modern ways of thinking and believing, and worshiping. So there was a group of Jews who made a deal with the Romans, that they would eliminate this belief about resurrection in exchange for being allowed to keep their religion, to keep their culture. They could practice their ceremonies. They could continue to make sacrifices. They could get sins forgiven. They could remember what it was to be God's people. They just needed to preach and teach the people that once this life was over, it was over. Those Romans didn't need to fear being judged by God, and neither did the Jewish people.

When they sold out their belief in the resurrection, they sold out their faith that God was going to come and save them, and that God was really in charge. And they sold out the idea that one day God would come and judge them for what they had done with all He had given them. For many of them, the power went to their heads. They began to lead personal lives that showed it was only wrong if you get caught, that you've only got one life, so live it to the fullest.

But notice that Jesus doesn't go there with the Sadducees. He takes them deeper into questioning all of their relationships. Instead of condemning their compromise, Jesus addresses the fear beneath it—the fear of losing control over our most precious relationships. Because all of our relationships will be affected by the resurrection.

Jesus' Deeper Response — True Belonging on Earth and in Eternity

He explains that in the Kingdom of Heaven, we are transformed. We are like the angels—not in form, but in our singular devotion to God. We don't have our earthly relationships anymore. When we're in heaven, we have heavenly relationships. What are those relationships like? Jesus says, "We are all God's children." While marriage may be one of the most important relationships we have in this world, in heaven the most important relationship we have is that God is our Heavenly Father. And every other relationship falls beneath that, because everybody else then becomes our brother and sister by adoption.

Our children, born from our bodies, sharing our own DNA, that we have raised and nurtured, held until our very last days, and sometimes until theirs, will no longer be our children in the same way after the resurrection. Those relationships will be transformed. And it makes me wonder, what does that mean for mothers who get to spend eternity with children that they never raised? Because of any number of unfortunate circumstances that occurred. Fathers who passed away too soon. Parents who were unable to provide for their children that were raised by adoptive parents instead. And what of those adopted parents who did everything for those children, but give birth to them? When they all get to heaven, who's really Mom, and who's really Dad?

Some of the hardest teachings that Jesus has for us are about these kinds of relationships. And it's because he has a way of gently but firmly affirming the importance of them, here in this life. Telling us and showing us that we need to be good stewards of these relationships. We need to care for these people as God cares for them. And then he often follows up at other points by saying, if you aren't willing to put all these other relationships aside, pick up your cross and follow him, and him alone, you may not even make it to heaven to have to worry about what your relationships are gonna be like there. Because that one most important relationship we have, our relationship with God as our Heavenly Father, reaches us today, and stays with us forever.

God's relationship with us will never change.

Our relationship with Him will change. We hope it will grow. And our relationships with each other will change, whether we want them to or not. And that can feel uncomfortable, even frightening, because our world teaches us to build our identity around our earthly relationships. Do you remember what it was like, those of you who are parents, when you had your first child and it felt like your entire world changed? The world didn't change, but you did. Or when you first became a grandparent and you were given a new name. I've seen grown men who are rough and tough, veterans of war, who have been places and seen things nobody needs to, that nobody should ever have to go through. And I've seen them undergo a personality change that transforms the way that they talk and act for the rest of their life, at the birth of a granddaughter or grandson.

And it's not just having children. It's our friends. It's our older family members that we want to be proud of us. It's the people we work for and with. Sometimes we think it's our hobbies and activities, our skills and abilities that carve out our identity, but I think, more often than not, it's the people who surround us when we do those things. It's really hard to identify yourself as a football player if you don't belong to a team. It's a lot more fun to fish if you've got people to share the catch with and to share the stories.

Let me bring this back to the heart of what Jesus is teaching the Sadducees and us. What are we to make of this uncomfortable response of Jesus? Because we do believe in the resurrection of the dead, and eternal life with God in heaven, forever. We do believe, as he taught, that when we submit ourselves to his saving grace, we are adopted into his family. Not as servants or second step-cousins, but as adopted brothers and sisters and co-heirs with him, of all that God is. We believe, as he reminded the Sadducees, that our God is a god of the living, not the dead, because all people since the beginning of creation are alive to the one who can raise the dead with a word. To our God, the people who have been gone so long that they're not even dust anymore are just sleeping, ready to be woken up. We believe in God’s power, and we put our hope in His love. And that means that just as our bodies are going to be made new, so will every one of our relationships. Our relationships will be sanctified and glorified.

When we stand together with Jesus there in heaven, there will be no sin to create tension, friction, hurt, awkwardness, or discomfort between us. When we get to heaven, no one will be a stranger. We will finally be, truly, the people God created us to be. And as we prepare today with that end in mind, that being our goal, that being the kind of people that God sent Jesus into this world to make a way for us to become, we can put our hope that he's going to get us there. And he gave us a really good start on preparing today, so we can actually reach that goal.

Loving Like Jesus and Rewriting Our Relationships

I'm sure many of you remember when the Pharisees tested Jesus, and they asked him what the greatest commandment was. And he said, "To love God with all your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength." And then he said the second commandment is just like the first one, and that was to love your neighbor as yourself. We've lifted that up for centuries as the golden rule, the greatest commandment. The line by which we measure ourselves and all of our relationships, reminding us that God is the most important relationship we have, period. And that for all other relationships after that, our measure is to love them like we love ourselves. And that's a really good place to start.

But as Jesus traveled with his 12 disciples there at the end, in his last week on Earth, in John Chapter 13, he pulled them close and said, "A new commandment I have for you." And he didn't tell them to love God and to love everyone else like they love themselves. He told them, "If you really do love me, if you really do love God, then I want you to obey my commands. And this command I'm giving you is new." That wasn't for everybody else because they were still working on loving God and loving everyone else as themselves.

He said, "This new command I give to you: Love everyone else not the way you love yourself, but the way I have loved you." He raised the standard for those relationships, not just to the best we can come up with in our own imagination and strength. Jesus told them, "I am the standard. If you have experienced my love, that is the kind of love I want you to share with everyone else."

Brothers and sisters, if we can transition and grow from that good place of loving God with all we have and all we are, and loving everyone else as we love ourselves—if we can grow that and nurture that and cultivate that to where we prove our love for God and for Jesus by giving up our own notions of what love looks like, and of what we want love to look like, then we can truly transform. When we look instead to Jesus and the way he loves us, and use that as the mark, the metric, and the way we build all of our relationships, we are preparing ourselves for heaven. Loving like Jesus will prepare us for those transformed, redeemed, sanctified, and glorified relationships that we will have with him in heaven for all eternity.

Reflection Questions:

Before we close in prayer, I want you to take a moment to reflect on these questions:

Think about the people in your life. Who are those most significant relationships you have—both those still with us and those who have gone on before us? And how do those relationships remind you who you are?

What relationships are you holding onto so tightly that they might be keeping you from fully trusting God? Which ones are you afraid to release control of?

And now think about Jesus. What are three ways that He loves you? And how does that remind you of who you are?

Now, pick one of those three things, pick one of those three ways today that Jesus loves you, and share that kind of love with people that Jesus has brought into your life.

Closing Prayer

Lord, we thank you for the relationships you have brought into our lives. We thank you for the love shared between husbands and wives. We thank you for the parents and grandparents who have loved and provided for us. We thank you for the children in our lives and for the love you show us, even as you entrust them to our care. We thank you for brothers and sisters—some born into families with us, others adopted into them, and so many more forged in the bond of service together. We thank You for friends and family and the way You work through them to help shape us into the people You are creating us to be.

And we know that while we still live in this broken, sinful world, all of our relationships are incomplete. Lord, we recognize that You alone can guide us to where we need to go and make us who we need to be. You alone can show us and enable us to love You and each other with true and perfect love. We remember today, Lord, that You are the God of the living, not the dead. And we remember that for all of those people we have in our lives, whether they are still with us today or have gone on to be with You, we remember that before they were ours, they are and continue to be Yours. And You will always have a greater claim on them than we ever will.

So today, Lord, we surrender our relationships to You. And we acknowledge that You love all these people better than we ever could. We turn our attention to You and ask You, Jesus, to teach us to love as You do. We lift this up in Jesus' name. Amen.